Esn's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[Lim and Richi:Enhancement]

Quite funny.

Not much of a plot, but hey, it made me laugh! :D Excellent intro, and excellent face animations when they talk. You also seem to have a knack for choosing good music to accompany your animations. The one at the credits was amazing - you wouldn't happen to have the title by any chance, would you?

I hope to see more of these, for a first episode this one was really good.

[Angel has Flown]

Worthy

This is a nice music video, and there were a few scenes in it which I really liked - the ones where he was running through the grass and flying through the clouds just really appealed to me emotionally.

Your style is pretty good, but beware - although your animations are smooth, some of them are incorrect. In particular, when your characters are running their feet don't actually lift up off the ground as they should. This is present both from the side views and the behind views, so it's something that needs to be fixed for any future animations. Perhaps you could try running yourself and noticing how your feet move.

Overall, a rather sweet, worthy animation. 7/10

[Shoo Fly]

Excellent animation

Yeah, I can only imagine how long that would've taken to draw... this was a really nice short animation, rather funny and skillfully made.

I especially liked how well it went with the music - how, for example, when the music played quieter you switched it to showing the OUTSIDE of the house. The fly was rather cute, and everything was skillfully animated.

I'm not as enthusiastic about the style, mainly because I don't really like this form of anime character drawing (especially how the faces look from the side). Still, that's my own personal opinion, I won't hold it against you (too much ;), and I realize that most people love it in any case so I'm in the minority.

A week ago I might've given this a "9", but my grading criteria has completely changed after watching Alek Wasilewski's masterpiece "Hanged Man's Elegy" - it really raised the bar. So I'm giving this an "8" - I realize that it's very well-done for what it is, but it doesn't aspire to anything as great, and (I'm sorry, and I know I'll get thrashed to bits for saying this) I don't believe that it deserves a score .37 higher than that phenomenal flash.

So I'm giving this an "8" - well-made, well-realized, and entertaining, but in the end not belonging to the higher realm of art.

[The NU adventures]

Yes, that is how I feel.

You did a very good job of showing what life in university feels like.

Excellent graphics and idea, you are trully one of the best artists on Newgrounds, I think. And I see that you're the guy who did "Las Aventuras de Mr. Coo" as well - I should have recognized the style! :)

Excellent job on everything. While there are probably some things that you could've done better, it is beyond my knowledge what those things are. Sorry, but I really am stumped - usually there's at least SOMETHING I can say, even for movies that have a much better score on Newgrounds.

I hope you release a third animation soon - that'll surely get you into the Top50 Artists on Nerwgrounds list (you need to have submitted at least 3 flashes to be on it).

[2012]

Not bad.

First of all, that's one awesome preloader... but anyway, this flash as a whole rather impressed me. There are many flaws in it, and the graphics are certainly not perfect, but it's impressive for the sheer scope of what was attempted. This is a BIG animation!

I'm not really into the whole "Rapture" thing at all, but I can definitely appreciate what you tried to do here. I especially liked your portrayal of the guy in black who was giving out the orders. Very creepy teeth... *shudder*

I can imagine some people being somewhat pissed off by the whole thing (especially those who have little tolerance for superstition), but if you're one of them, just take it for what it's worth - it is, at the heart of it, just a story. You don't get pissed off because Star Wars isn't actually real, do you? Well, no reason to here. ;)

So anyway, good luck on your future projects. This one was quite nice.

[Primal War 06]

Incredible...

I've seen all of the other ones in this series, and this is the first one that I've given a 10 to. It's not a perfect 10, mind you - there were a few places were the graphics were just a bit rough (during the middle of the battle scene, in particular), but overall this shows MANY signs of improvement from previous episodes. It's pretty damn close to a perfect 10. The graphics are smoother, the sound is quite nice and (for the second time) is pretty much perfect, and the story was fleshed out really nicely.

About the alligators - I guess the battle is between modern creatures and dinosaurs, then, not between lizards and mammals? I don't really know of another way to explain it.

I don't think that the little message at the end was quite right, though - it somehow ruined the serious mood. I think it should've been a little more "epic-sounding" than simply "these guys won this time".

I'm very curious right now about what the conclusion is going to be...

Oh, and I'm surprised at how few reviews this has gotten! This masterpiece deserves more attention, dammit! :P

[Fred the Notable Monkey]

Note to Wikipedia admin below

The main reason I go on the Wiki is because it has articles on more things than a regular encyclopedia. Regular encyclopedias take up physical space, which is why they cannot contain too many things (that, and because they don't have as many writers working for them). However, what the hell would be the problem with having a gajillion wikipedia articles? It's not like they take up any physical space. People will only find them if they SEARCH for them, and I actually LIKE seeing that there's a Wikipedia article on some obscure thing that I didn't think anyone else knew about. The problem with deciding that only things that you deem worthy will be in wikipedia begs the question: who decides what is worthy? And why does it matter, since the people who don't search for it will never see it anyway?

But anyway, on to my review of the flash:

Nice character design, nice colour scheme, and fairly good animation (a bit too static, but I understand that you're trying to save time). The monkey's voice could've been worse, but it was still far too high-pitched for my liking. Nice idea overall, although you could've taken it a bit further I think.

JKR responds:

Thanks for the review! I agree with you in that I think it is not hurting anyone to have more obscure things also in Wikipedia. Perhaps a system could be set up where the most popular items are held within a certain place so they are quick to access, but the less popular things might take a bit longer to load. That way you wouldn't be affecting the people who get searched out more often. Just a thought.
Anyway, glad you liked the cartoon okay. Yes, doing one a week all by myself (voices, animation, everything) does put a limit on what I can do without not sleeping and going crazy. =)
I hope you enjoy the next Fred cartoon more, and I'll try and add even more animation to it.

[Ultimate Wallball]

We had a similar game...

...in my school (I'm in Toronto). It was called "Red Ass". :P It was with more than 2 people usually - every time someone caught the ball before the first bounce, the person who threw it got a letter (starting with "R", then "E" and so on).

Ah yes, this flash sure brings back memories. The actual character graphics weren't that great, but the frame-by-frame animation was really good! This was indeed the ULTIMATE game of Wallball. :)
It was very fun to watch, although some of the backgrounds could've used a little more detail. Oh, nice job on the voice-acting as well - it sounded pretty good, which is quite an accomplishment when you consider it to the majority of the stuff that's submitted on to NG. I think that you should use more voices next time you do something (if it's appropriate of course - I think in this case, some voices while they were fighting wouldn't have hurt).

The music was generally good, but the changes of music were rather abrupt sometimes.

Overall this falls somewhere between a 7 and an 8. I'm giving you a "7" on this review, but I voted 4/5.

Cheers. :)

[The Latest Model]

Excellent

...yes,your work is definitely moving in a nice direction. One thing that bugged me about the graphics (which were mostly quite good) was that their necks were ON TOP of their shirts! So when their heads moved, the necks also moved up & down as if they were separated from their bodies. It didn't look right, I think you should make sure that the necks are covered by the sweatshirt collar when they move.

I really liked how this flash, unlike most of your past work, actually had a clear and discernable message. There will always be some idiots who think that it's random, but I think that most of us realized what you were trying to say. :) I gotta say that I love the humour too. Witty and subtle, my favourite type!